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What’s new: Power Apps June 2023 Feature Update

Headshot of article author Clay Wesener

Welcome to the Power Apps monthly feature update! We will use this blog to share a summary of product, community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place. A variety of new and highly anticipated features are now available which we are very excited to share for coauthoring, Wrap, Customer managed keys, and mobile app improvements.

We are continuing to improve and simplify the platform, with updates in Trust, Maker and End User Productivity as well as new video and doc contents to help you adopt and optimize Power Apps within your organization.

Trust

  • Power Platform Customer-managed key (CMK) is now Generally Available.

Maker Productivity

  • Excel to Table to App is now in public preview
  • Coauthoring in Modern App Designer is now Generally Available
  • Test Studio in Sovereign is now Generally Available
  • Enhanced Component Properties

End User Productivity

  • Modern control updates
  • Power apps mobile home page performance improvements and new features for iOS & Android
  • Monthly channel for model-driven apps is Generally Available
  • Shared Device Mode for Power Apps on Android is Generally Available
  • General Availability of wrap for Power Apps wizard

Trust

Power Platform Customer-managed key (CMK) is now Generally Available.

Encryption is one of several defenses-in-depth that are available to secure storage. All the customer data and configuration information stored in Power Platform is encrypted at rest with strong Microsoft-managed encryption keys. However, the use of CMK provides added data protection control, by allowing customers to manage their own encryption keys. When managed key encryption is used, all business-critical data is encrypted with a user-provided Azure Key Vault key. This provides the ability for customers to rotate/swap the encryption key on demand. It also provides the ability for customers to revoke Microsoft’s access to sensitive information by revoking the access to the key, at any time.

You can also upgrade your current bring-your-own-key (BYOK) environments to CMK immediately. Upgrading to CMK removes the BYOK limitations and allows you to use the Dataverse Search and eliminate the file size restriction for upload files and images and provides better storage of audit logs.

Learn more at Announcing General Availability for Power Platform Customer-managed key (CMK) | Microsoft Power Apps

Maker Productivity

Excel to Table to App is now in public preview

We are happy to announce that Excel to Table to App is now in public preview. With Excel to Table to App, you can easily import your data from Excel and create a Dataverse table as well as responsive canvas app. When Copilot is enabled in your environment, it will assist with your table creation by providing the best fitting table names, descriptions, along with column names and data types based on the uploaded Excel data.

Learn more at Introducing an easier than ever experience to import data from Excel | Microsoft Power Apps

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Coauthoring in Modern App Designer is now Generally Available

We’re thrilled to announce that coauthoring in Modern App Designer is now generally available! This exciting feature modernizes model-driven app development by enabling real-time collaboration and innovation. With the GA release, multiple fusion team makers can confidently and effortlessly edit and contribute to an app simultaneously, streamlining workflows and boosting productivity. 

Team members can collaborate directly in the Modern App Designer together and changes are seamlessly synchronized, ensuring a hassle-free editing experience. This feature allows teams to collaborate anytime, anywhere, securely and in a controlled environment. And best of all, users do not have to do anything to enable as this feature is on by default. So get started today and visit our Power Apps documentation to learn more about coauthoring in Modern App Designer. We can’t wait to see how you take app development to new heights through seamless collaboration and accelerated innovation.

Learn more at Coauthoring in model-driven apps with Power Apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Test Studio in Sovereign is now Generally Available

Test Studio is now available in GCC, GCC-High, Mooncake, and GCC-DOD with version 3.23055.   

Use Test Studio to build end-to-end UI tests for your canvas app. Maintain your app quality by continually validating that your app works as expected when new changes or updates are deployed.  Test Studio is launched from the “Advanced tools” pane of Power Apps Studio.

Learn more at Test Studio – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Enhanced Component Properties

We have released new updates to our experimental enhanced component properties. The goal of this update is to provide clearer concepts with concise features and limitations for each. As part of our effort to finalize this feature and make it ready for public preview, we are soliciting feedback on these updates and the overall properties features.

There are now 4 distinct types of properties: data, function, event and action. Data properties are simple properties that provide data that goes in (input) or out (output) of your component. Function properties are properties that can accept arguments, like functions, and return a value. The (input) behavior properties have been renamed to Events, and Actions have been introduced which are output behavior properties. This means your component can now also have a behavior function that can be called from the app.

Learn more at Enhanced component properties | Microsoft Power Apps

End User Productivity

Modern control updates

Power Apps team released new updates for modernization on canvas and model apps. Canvas updates include new experience to add modern controls & key improvements on critical controls like consistent and maker friendly for controls like checkbox, button, dropdown, and text. Model apps updates include visual improvements across dialogs & loading indicators.

Learn more at May 2023 updates for modernization in Power Apps | Microsoft Power Apps

Power apps mobile home page performance improvements and new features for iOS & Android

Power apps mobile apps have got some exciting new features:

  1. Home page loads 4 times faster: Power apps mobile home page is now super-fast and loads within seconds for both iOS and Android platforms.
  1. Enhanced visibility for model apps: Power apps mobile users can now see model apps in the recent apps section and can also mark them as favorite. Previously, these features were only limited to canvas apps. But now, they can also use model apps without having to search for them every time after login.
  1. New Recommended section on home page: We have now created a new section called “Recommended apps”. This new section is just below current favorite sections and shows top 10 apps that we think are beneficial for users. These apps also include apps created by users and first party apps.

Learn more at Install the Power Apps mobile app – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Monthly channel for model-driven apps is generally available

Release Channels for model-driven apps is now available in both public and sovereign clouds. Release channels provide more choice for adopting new features in model driven apps and Dynamics 365 apps.  Rather than only being able to receive updates twice a year during the wave releases, you can choose some or all users to receive more frequent updates through monthly channel.

Learn more at Announcing monthly channel for model-driven apps | Microsoft Power Apps

Shared Device Mode for Power Apps on Android is Generally Available

Microsoft’s Shared Device Mode (SDM) allows frontline workers to sign in or out of Power Apps and other Microsoft products in a single step, providing convenience, efficiency, and security for workers who frequently hand off shared devices. (e.g. on shift change).

This feature is particularly useful for industries like retail, healthcare and manufacturing where multiple users share devices, often within a shift with tight time constraints. When Power Apps users have finished with their shift or task, they can sign out once and they will be immediately signed out of all supported apps and the device will be ready for the next employee to use. The simplicity of this flow improves frontline workers’ experience and operational efficiency.

Learn more at Announcing General Availability for Shared Device Mode for Power Apps on Android | Microsoft Power Apps

General Availability of wrap for Power Apps wizard

Makers can use wrap wizard to create secure, custom-branded, standalone Android and iOS native mobile apps and distribute them to the end users via the mobile app stores like Google Play Store and Apple Business Manager, or other distribution methods like Microsoft Intune and Microsoft App Center.

Wrap wizard eliminates the complexity of building and securing native mobile apps for Power Apps, automates the app registration, API configuration and code signing steps and ties the end-to-end process into one simple, guided experience!

Learn more at Announcing General Availability of wrap for Power Apps wizard | Microsoft Power Apps

Video, Learning and Doc Updates

See new videos released by our Power CAT and Cloud Advocacy teams on Express Design and Custom Connectors.

Power Pages – Enterprise Security & Trust Deep Dive
Meet Dipti Jaiswal discussing the newly unveiled features for Power Pages enabling your enterprise trust and security. Find out about our latest white papers that can help organizations gain clarity of Architecture and Security features available earn the trust to enable their organization digital transformation journey with external business websites in Microsoft Power Platform.

We’ve also released new, and made updates to some of our documentation – see a summary before of some of the key updates: 

For AdminsManage behavior settings (updates)
View the Power Platform connector activity logs (updates)
Create or edit a security role to manage access (updates)
Audit security roles (updates)
Manage your customer-managed encryption key (updates)
Managed environment licensing (updates)
Configure user security in an environment (updates)
General availability deployment (updates)
Tenant-to-tenant migration (updates)
Enable Managed environments (updates)
New Microsoft Dataverse storage capacity (updates)
For MakersAI Copilot overview (preview) (new)
Build apps through conversation (preview) (new)
Add Chatbot control to a canvas app (preview) (new)
Add Copilot control to a canvas app (preview) (new)
Azure OpenAI Service model overview (preview) (new)
Dataverse long term data retention (preview) (new)
Use Dataverse low-code plug-ins (experimental) (new)
Create and edit elastic tables (preview) (new)
Preview an app (new)
Get started with Power Apps (new look – preview) (new)
Create a canvas app from a template (new look – preview) (new)
Create a canvas app with data from an Excel file (new look – preview) (new)
Generate an app automatically using data from SQL (new look – preview) (new)
Create a canvas app with data from SharePoint (new look – preview) (new)
Create an canvas app with data from Microsoft Dataverse (new look – preview) (new)
Embedding limits for canvas apps (updates)
Connect to Microsoft Dataverse (updates)
Cards documentation for controls and screens (updates)
Export Dataverse data in Delta Lake format (preview) (updates)
Export data on grid page (updates)
Explore data on a grid page (updates)
Share a model-driven app using Power Apps (updates)
Share a canvas app with your organization  (updates)
For UsersKnown issues about activities (new)
About dialog for model-driven apps (new)
Set up mobile offline for canvas apps (preview) (updates)
Mobile offline capabilities and limitations (updates)
Enhanced user experience with Unified Interface for model-driven apps (updates)
Attach a file to email (updates)
Mobile offline for canvas apps (preview) (updates)
For DevelopersCreate and update column definitions using the Web API (new)
Power Platform CLI June refresh (updates)
Register a plug-in (updates)
Configure table relationship cascading behavior (Updates)

Please continue sending us your feedback on features you would like to see in Power Apps. We hope that you enjoy the update!